


sympathy for the devil

by firstaudrina



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse, American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 07:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16445195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Has your mother ever stood behind you with her fingers on the hilt of a knife, her skin slippery with supernatural perspiration but not a tremor in that ghostly hand?No, probably not. Michael supposed it was a pretty specific situation.Episode 8x06, "Return to Murder House," from Michael's PoV.





	sympathy for the devil

**Author's Note:**

> Everything canon stands, so the same characters are alive/dead and the same baby Antichrist misdeeds ensue.

Has your mother ever stood behind you with her fingers on the hilt of a knife, her skin slippery with supernatural perspiration but not a tremor in that ghostly hand?

No, probably not. Michael supposed it was a pretty specific situation. 

 

 

 

The first memory Michael had was of mirrors. Looking up as though from a great distance, like Alice tumbling down from one world to another and finding the way lined with looking glasses. Seeing himself reflected over and over, upside down, blackened eyes and cloven feet. And then the shadows fracturing, the smell of gardenia perfume. Constance taking him in his arms. The steady, poison beat of her heart. 

The first human touch he ever felt was Constance. He went directly from his mother to her hands. So he gave her little things. He called soft creatures to him and grasped them with clumsy hands that did not work as fast as his mind, not yet. He was gentle, sometimes; he made their breath stop in their lungs before affixing them to her doorway. But other times he could not quiet his eager thoughts, could not stop the bubbling laughter that peeled their skin from muscle and bone. She should have appreciated the extra effort.

Sometimes he would catch Constance looking at him. Just looking, her eyes soft and faraway, and she would say, “You are the very picture of your father, my little demon, aren’t you?”

Maybe she thought he didn’t understand, that he was too young. But he remembered. 

She petted his plump cheeks and stroked his blonde hair, sighed at the sight of his blue eyes. “There isn’t a closed door in the world that beauty can’t open,” she told him, still a toddler but not on the inside, inside he was pulling at his bindings. “Remember that, my Michael. Your beauty is a key.”

But he was still beautiful when he jumpstarted his body’s growth, blossomed one decade in one night, and that was when she stopped loving him.

 

 

 

Constance was always swatting at his fingers when he reached for extra servings at dinner. Tsking when he did something wrong, her cigarette between two fingers as she puffed her disappointment. Eat this, don’t eat that, do your homework, clean up. Diction and phrasing lessons like he was a starlet at the studio’s door. Acrylic nails poking the small of his back to make him stand up straight. Grandmother, can I — no. Grandmother, _may_ I. 

When they sat down for dinner at the rickety kitchen table that wobbled on the ratty linoleum, she made him say grace like a test. She watched him across the crocheted tablecloth, wary now, no longer beaming her blessings at him. Her eyes no longer said _my boy_ ; they asked _who are you?_

Michael put his hands around her neck. She would probably have done the same to him if she was strong enough. She hated his guts. He could tell. 

But he wasn’t strong enough yet, either. 

 

 

 

The house held a peculiar appeal. 

Constance didn’t like him to go over there when he was small and it was a lesson that stuck even after he wasn’t. Perhaps that was one of many reasons why she chose it as her final resting place. He buried her body in its backyard, under a rosebush. After that he found it harder to stay away. He felt relief as soon as he crossed over onto the grounds. Here was the place blood was first spilled in his name. 

Ben found him first, but the rest of them didn’t wait much longer. The mistress tried to fuck him. The Infantata cowered. The doctor looked at him with soft wonderment, said, “Oh, yes, yes, I remember. Incredible work, I did it myself, you know. So much blood. She’s still here, but of course you’d know that.”

“She?” Michael asked.

“Your mother,” the doctor said. “Your fathers. All of them. I admit, it was a foolish flight of fancy on my wife’s part, the baby, but it all turned out in the end, didn’t it?” He gestured at Michael with a sticky gloved hand. “Proof is in the pudding!”

_You are the very picture of your father_ , Constance had said. But she never specified which one.

 

 

 

The house told him. The mahogany walls breathed and the Tiffany glass shuddered. The doors creaked open and shut, telling Michael again and again: Tate. _Tate_. 

If Michael closed his eyes and waited, the house would show him, too. He would feel the phantom stretch of latex, the snug zipper against the nape of his neck. He knew without having to ask what Tate had done in this house, in that suit. It proved to him how alike they were, that they shared an internal darkness that could not be brought to life by any amount of love. Especially when their love took such brutal forms. 

Michael thought of the animals he’d slaughtered carelessly, thoughtlessly, from the smallest mouse to the babysitter. No matter how many gruff fatherly smiles Ben gave him, there was no way for him to comprehend that Michael was simply not made like other men. He was forged in a pool of blood and fed on raw meat. It was his birthright. 

Tate told Michael he was evil, a monster. It was many years before Michael realized that conversation was also a question of reflections. 

 

 

 

“My father in love with my sister,” Michael whispered to Tate once, just to see what would happen. “Do you really think you’ll find redemption in that?”

Tate was too easy. All the ghosts trod out their familiar loops, and his was one of futile anger. He grabbed Michael by the shirt and smashed his spine against the bannister, no Ben around to save him. “Stop _saying_ that shit,” he fumed, his eyes so dark and Michael’s so pale, so little alike in such similar souls. “I’m not your goddamn father!”

Michael felt only a cool emptiness. “Go ahead, forget everything,” he said, ducking away from Tate. “It’s what you’re best at.” 

And that taste of shame in Tate’s expression, hidden deep, deep down? It was the first time Michael learned that he could live on the indignity of others. He could feast on their humiliation and regret. It was an important lesson to learn. For later. 

 

 

 

Michael suspected something was coming when the crows started circling. 

He was strong enough that the house had started to mold itself to him: every room he went into matched his temperature, the spirits gave him a wide berth. But late at night if he pretended to sleep, the house would let its guard down and he could hear the distant newborn crying of his only brother. He knew wherever the baby was, _she_ was.

She had loved him before he was born. Michael knew that because she had eaten the pancreas and devoured the brains, she had fed him and protected him and given up her life in exchange for his. Ben told him that Vivien wanted Michael to grow up far from the house, with a loving father and a normal childhood. She didn’t know then that he’d have been killing cats in California or Boston; it didn’t make a difference where he was. He was her baby then and she loved him — until, like Constance, all of a sudden she didn’t anymore. 

He gave that lack of love back to her in flames. 

 

 

 

The morning after the Satanists arrived, Michael found Miriam bustling around the kitchen making coffee like she’d been there his whole life. “Mornin’!” she said brightly when she saw him. “You know, I gotta say I love the energy in this place. Really feels like the ground might open up and swallow the whole damn house. It’s fantastic.”

Michael laughed a little. “Is it?”

“You betcha.” She slid a plate of French toast towards him. She had drawn a frowny face on it with whipped cream and blueberries for eyes. “Looks just like you,” she added, and Michael laughed again. 

“Did you really follow a dark star to find me?”

“Like a jewel in the velvet night,” Miriam confirmed. “The Father let us right to you.”

_For what?_ Michael thought, and _how?_ and _why?_ Instead he asked, “You mean the Devil?”

“The big daddy of ‘em all,” Miriam said. “But for me, it’s a metaphor — a sign of allegiance. For you, it’s a fact.”

“My father is the teenage ghost of a school shooter,” Michael told her.

“Oh no, honey,” she said. “You’re made of darker stuff than that.”

But the way she said it was different than someone else might — there was pride in her voice, a tone of triumphant affection. Miriam would have appreciated it when he hung rabbits from the kitchen ceiling. “How can you be sure?”

“I just gotta look at you.” And she did, warm eyes in that severe face. “I know you’re something special.”

For perhaps the first time, Michael believed that he was. 

 

 

 

The girl’s heart was still hot when he sank his teeth into the meat of it. The fibers did not come apart easily and they stuck between his molars; blood flooded his mouth and coated his tongue. It had been alive. She had been alive. 

Michael faced those three eager followers he had not asked for, but only in Miriam did he see true understanding of sacrifice. She was pained and determined and victorious. Her belief was true and he found he did not mind carrying the weight of it. She understood. 

“Ave Satanas,” they intoned. Heat flushed Michael’s skin. The words were like a match struck on the flint of his flesh. _Ave Santanas_. It was hard to imagine it had anything to do with him. Had his conception been a dark bargain hatched by an ancient universe? Was he really so important? 

There was Tate’s rejection. Ben forsaking him. Constance’s escape. Vivien’s sense of holy purpose. Their joint conviction that Michael was a mistake that must be erased when he had never asked to be scratched into existence. 

But someone had asked for him. 

“Father,” Michael announced. “I am with you now.” 

Little children, it is the last hour.


End file.
